Rode on Sunday what turned our to be a huge ride. About 26.5 miles, with 3200 feet of vertical elevation gain. No forest service road on this ride so it was all single track. Took me 4 hours 33 minutes, which includes a coupla food stops and a rest or two. Avg HR was 148, which is good for cardio and fat burn.

Anyway, I took the camera reins to film bike neighbor riding this knarly and steep section. Dude can seriously mash the pedals. Near the end of the video there is a guy standing next to the trail. I thought he was riding the mtn bike version of the Tour de France, because we was all decked out. Dude didn't even make it to where I was standing. Neither did I, but I'm a self proclaimed Nancy on the trail.

Thanks for the feedback. I figure everyone cringes when they see these posts - LOL.

I'll probably post another video or two tomorrow. I'm off work, so we are going to do a big ride, 28 or 30 miles. It has one knarly section, not technical (not going down big rocks and stuff) but a long steep section with a lot of loose rocks the size of baseballs, roots as big and bigger than the barrell of a baseball bat, and a lot of loose and relatively deep dirt. The night I crashed we rode down this section. My back tire is locked up going down it, but it is steep and loose enough, I can steer the bike while draggign the rear tire. We'll ride over my bike crash scene as well. At least one "mtn bike hiking" section down a rocky creek bed that is part of the trail. Big rocks that even bike neighbor won't ride down. I'll get a video of that.

The Colorado trail goes across most of the state, and fortunately begins about 4 miles from my house. We are going to drop my truck at that parking lot, then have Bike Neighbor's wife drive us about an hour up to near where this video was taken, and ride home, to where we are dropping my truck. 4,000 vertical feet of ascent and 6000 feet of descent, if I remember correctly. I'm going to be exhausted.

If anyone is interested, this is pretty cool.

There is a race/ride every year for professional/hard core mtn bikers. They do it in 6 or 7 days. The have 10,000 to 12,000 vertical feet of climbing each day. Below it says, for upper echelon mtn bikers, like Bike Neighbor, it takes 15 to 20 days. Ran into some hikers beginning the trip, in July, and they hoped to hike it in 30 days.

Upper echelon cyclists consider The Colorado Trail a premier, world class, long distance mountain biking trail. It is possible to do the Trail & detours via bike without any vehicular support by re-supplying in Frisco, Leadville, Buena Vista, and Silverton. Allow maybe 15 to 20 days for the trip. Cyclists can also travel the entire Trail with detours in a variety of supported ways, lighten their load and trim their number of days. A mountain bike is a great way to travel the Trail, but expect to push the bike on some of the steeper, rockier pitches.

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Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately. I wouldn't say I've been *missing* it, Bob.

Yup - I'm guessing the steep knarly section is roughly .25 miles and I can only ride about a total of 50 feet of it, going uphill. If you lose traction, it is too steep to get started again. When I walk it, my HR is about 175.

I rode for about a year before I had the gnads to try it down hill. Went over the handle bars once. Going a little too slow and hit a ginormous root. Bike stopped, and I kept going.

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Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately. I wouldn't say I've been *missing* it, Bob.

I looked at the segments in the link for the trail. Tomorrow we are starting at the end of segment 2 and riding back to the beginning.

Says it is 4300 ft of elevation gain for the first two segments, whcih means there is an additional 1,700 ft of "up and down" on top of the elevation change. I better start drinking water.

NOTE: Say you start at 6000 ft of elevation and end at 7000 feet of elevation. The gain is 1000 feet. For ascent, even though you gain elevation over all, if there is a down hill section that is 500 feet down hill (the path dropping into a vellay between two ridge lines), you ultimately have an aditional 500 feet of climbing, making the total ascent 1500 feet, when the total elevation gainis only 1,000.

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Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately. I wouldn't say I've been *missing* it, Bob.

But really, didn't man create the bike to make a little better time than riding Shank's pony?

If you can run the trail faster than you can bike it...

Dude, get this. Instead of jogging the trail, we can get $4500 bikes and make shittier time! We'll need gear too. Bass fishing shades, a backpack, special shoes and shorts. Who the fuck cares that our taints will look like ballpark franks for the next week. WE BIKED THE MOTHERFUCKING HIKING TRAIL!!!

LOL - True, but at this point in my ripe old age, It's about the knees and ankles. Bike = good. Running = bad. Otis, it's OK to join the bike club. If any one gives your crap about it, I'll come out there with my bike shorts for re-enforcement.

There is one trail I ride that is mostly up hill to the end, then you come back on it. A couple of runners actually made better time on it than I did on my bike.

I have to say, if I lived in Ohio, where I grew up, I would probably never consider "mtn biking" (I guess it would be called trail riding in the flat lands of the mid west). Stifling heat and lots of humidity, I think I'll go for a ride - NOT. Colorado: over 7000 feet, usually shaded in the woods, rarely over 80 at that elevation, and about 10%-15% humidity riding and viewing pine trees and mountains. That sounds inviting to me. Out here, or places with at least some hills, it is a lot of fun. The aspect I like the most: NO CARS

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Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately. I wouldn't say I've been *missing* it, Bob.

LOL - True, but at this point in my ripe old age, It's about the knees and ankles.

Hmm. I'd be worried about my prostate too. Can't imagine that terrain is good for that!

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"Dreith said I hit Sipe too hard. I hit him as hard as I could. Brian has a chance to go out of bounds and he decides not to. He knows I'm going to hit him. And I do. History."- - - Jack Lambert, after referee Ben Dreith ejected him from a game for knocking out Browns QB Brian Sipe.

It isn't like riding your brand new Huffy 12 speed down the curb, in 1978, on your way to the gas station to play video games Otis. Padded bike shorts and full suspension make a huge difference.

At my house, the "curb" where the street meets the sidewalk is angled instead of being vertical (so you can drive your car over it easier without having an apron for the driveway). It is probably still a 65 degree angle, I'm guessing. I can ride that bike up the curb, at 10+ mph, no bike shorts, no pulling up on the handle bars, and it is less of a bump than riding over a garden hose on an old school, or current, "10 speed" bike. The front and rear suspension, if set up correctly absorb the impact. Both shocks are air shocks and have a certain amount of air pressure depending on your body weight, so it is a plush ride. Those bikes aren't spendy for looks.

Next time you get out to Denver, I'll give you a ride on the handle bars

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Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately. I wouldn't say I've been *missing* it, Bob.